Heating Glass to Make Beads

Video Transcript

"Alright now that you have the mandril heated up, we're going to heat up your rod of glass. For this particular bead, for the base, I'm going to use a black glass, which is actually a very, very dark, transparent purple. Now, while you're heating your glass in the tip of the flame you want to make sure that you keep your mandril in the bottom of the flame so that it can stay warm. So, as the tip of your rod begins to glow orange, you want to bring it down farther into the flame and remember you want to rotate both the mandril and the glass rod at the same time. Again, you're getting to that point to where you see the honey-like texture of the glass where it starts to drip. And you're going to apply outside of the flame, just underneath, in one even ring. You're going to use this ring, this is called the footprint of your bead. This is the base of your bead. You're going to use this in order to build the rest of your bead on. So what you want to do is make sure that you get this bead completely centered just by using heat and gravity. And there you have the beginning of a round bead."